Thursday, February 14, 2013

Best Pizza Sauce and Breadsticks Ever

Happy Valentine's Day! Turn your breadsticks into hearts for the ones you love!

My friend had us over for dinner a couple weeks ago and we had the most amazing homemade pizza, breadsticks, and dipping sauce I'd ever had homemade before. I asked her where she got her recipe--ourbestbites.com. I came home and started searching the site to find the recipes. It took me a while to find the recipes (they have a great organized site by category and type of food) so I wanted to post all three recipes I used in the same post for ease in the future. Here are the recipes with a couple of changes I did when I made it. Enjoy!

Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add a third of the water at a time, whisking together until well blended. Add the other ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use. It covers two average-sized pizza. You can freeze the remainder if you only do one pizza or just use it for dipping. If you do put in in the fridge or freezer in between servings slowly reheat it in the microwave at a lower cook power setting--30 seconds at a time--stirring in between. The reason for this is that the cheese in it could melt at a higher/prolonged power. This stuff is great for dipping with the breadsticks.

In a large bowl (the bowl of your mixer, if you have one), combine water, sugar, and yeast. Let stand for 5-10 minutes or until yeast is bubbly.

Add salt and stir. Add 1 1/2 c. flour and mix well. Gradually add more flour--about 3 cups give or take--until dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl and it barely sticks to your finger.

Spray a glass or metal bowl with cooking spray and place dough in the bowl.
Cover and allow to rise for 45 minutes or until doubled.

To form the breadsticks:

Punch the dough down, remove from bowl and place on a lightly-floured surface. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Roll into a rectangle and cut into 12 strips with a pizza cutter.

Roll out each piece of dough into a long snake and then drape the middle of the long rope over your forefinger and twist the two strings of dough around each other until you reach the bottom of the ropes with your other hand. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining 11 pieces of dough. Try to space them evenly. I ended up using two cookie sheets and baked them separately.

I also made cinnamon breadsticks and formed them into hearts after rolling them into a rope. Form your breadsticks however you desire. Or spread your dough out on a pan to make a pizza.

Cover pan with a light cloth or sprayed plastic wrap and allow dough to rise for another 30 minutes. A method I use on occasion to help them rise quicker is to heat my oven to 150 or 160 degrees and turn off the oven, then put the cookie sheet in to rise in there.

When there’s about 15 minutes to go, preheat your oven to 375. When done rising, bake for 10-12 minutes or until barely golden. Or if your breadsticks are rising in the oven, take off the cloth or plastic wrap, then leaven them in there while it's heating up. Once it gets to temperature, set the timer for a minute or two less than the baking time. When they're done, rub some butter on top of the breadsticks (I like to fold the paper on the butter down a bit and rub the stick of butter on top of each stick) and sprinkle with garlic bread seasoning. Or sprinkle with cinnamon sugar--those were good too.